


Never Change

by MsPen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Destiel - Freeform, M/M, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:53:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8611273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsPen/pseuds/MsPen
Summary: While Dean struggles to understand a relationship with Cas that's yet to be, his future-self has one chance to change what's already taken place.





	1. "Not Yet"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MollyFrisky36](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyFrisky36/gifts).



> Requested (very specifically) by MollyFrisky36 (who provided a detailed list of plot demands).

"We need to talk."

Dean waited for...well, himself, to look up.  _I will never get used to that. Is that really what my face looks like?_

Dean–the version of Dean that he wasn't, yet, pushed a bottle toward him. The glass was grimy, and it didn't have a label.

That was as much of an answer as Dean had hoped for. He pulled up a chair and spun it backward to straddle it. "What exactly did you mean by 'messed up situation'?"

"I meant what I said. When you need to know something–"

"Yeah. I'll know. I got that part. But here's the thing: something is different. About Cas. Now, I don't know if you made a deal with him or what–"

"Something like that." Other-Dean didn't look him in the eye.

"That, right there." Dean snapped his fingers and pointed at his future face. "I know that look. The avoiding eye contact thing, that's my signature I-don't-want-to-deal-with-this-crap look. Now, either you tell me what's going on with Cas–"

"Or what? You'll kick your own ass?" Other-Dean shot back.

"You think I couldn't take myself in a fight?" What was he saying? Whatever his future work-out regimen was, it was paying off. It would be pretty embarrassing to get beaten up by himself. It would be the ultimate "stop hitting yourself."

He swallowed, his throat suddenly thick. Whatever was in the bottle was starting to look real good, even with the thin layer of sediment at the bottom. "I just want to know what's going on. If this is going to be my life, I should at least get a heads up."

Other-Dean stood slowly, towering over his past self. "This isn't your life. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. But right now, it's mine. And it sucks, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to hand the keys over to my doppelganger."

"I'm not a–" Dean held up his hands. "All I'm asking is to know if Cas is all right. You were me, once. You know how important Cas is–was–to...us. And he's not the same."

"None of us are the same," his future-self said, scooping up the bottle. He stalked toward the door. "And you have no idea how we feel about Cas. Not yet."

He left Dean alone, that "not yet" ringing in his brain.

* * *

 

Dean stopped outside Cas's cabin and took a long drink to finish off the bottle. When it was nearly empty, he bashed it against the porch. It was stupid, and it was wasteful, but it felt good. Of all the things the fall of humanity had robbed him of, decent booze and expendable glass to take out his frustrations on were high on the list.

The night was clammy, like a slimy blanket wrapped around him. He pounded on the lintel and called, "Cas? You alone?"

There was a momentary silence, followed by giggles, and Cas's, "I can be."

Another moment passed before two girls hurried out through the beaded curtain, their clothes bundled in their arms.

The free love crap was genius. Five years ago, Dean would have wished he'd thought of it. 

Cas lay in a mound of pillows on the floor, sweaty, naked, and unapologetic.

"I see you're dispensing some spiritual guidance." Dean toed off his boots.

Cas grinned and stretched every muscle in his lean body. "What can I say? I learned at the feet of the master." He paused, falling intensely serious. "And the pizza man. And the cable installer. And the casting agent–"

Every now and then, shades of the old Cas emerged. The goofy, clueless, way-too-literal Cas that Dean had fallen for. The one who had slipped away so gradually, Dean hadn't known how to stop it, or that it was even happening at all.

"That's...more information than I'm gonna need," Dean said, tearing his gaze away.

When he glanced back, Cas's smiled widened. He lifted an eyebrow. "I didn't realize we still had anything to hide."

Dean rolled his eyes and shrugged off his jacket.  _"Something is different. About Cas_." There wasn't time to worry about that, now. He had an apocalypse to deal with. People who depended on him. Sammy, out there somewhere with Lucifer riding around in him like a Gundam suit. That's why he and Cas kept it so casual. No strings. No messy feelings. Nothing that could interfere with the end of the world.

Just a messed up situation.

"So, whose cabin are you 'sleeping in' tonight?" Cas made quotes around the words. He rose and padded to the bed, where an ashtray waited on the nightstand. He lifted a half-burned joint and a lighter, cupping his hands around both to spark it up.

"Jane's covering for me again." The musty, earthy smoke reached out to Dean's senses like a phantom hand.

Cas settled on the bed, an arm thrown behind his head as he took a long hit. "Nobody's covering for you. Everyone already knows." He held up the joint in offering.

Dean waved it off. "Look, I'm tired. It's been one hell of a weird day. I just want to get some sleep."

"Are you sure? Because I can get Misty and Angela to come back–"

"Cas." Dean almost felt guilty for the wounded look on his friend's face. Almost. "I said I'm tired."

He undressed and blew out the stupid scented candles Cas wasted everywhere.  _Looks like a Pier One projectile vomited in here._ He went to the bed and climbed under the covers. A moment and a rustle of the sheets later, Cas's warm, strong body spooned up behind him.

"You know it's just you, Dean," Cas whispered in the darkness. "None of the other stuff...none of it matters. Just you."

"Yeah," Dean said, his voice low, his heart hollow. "I know."


	2. "Arrangement"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Props to me for accidentally calling Chuck "Carter" for some reason. Batting a thousand today!

Dean's--Future-Dean's--settlement might have been safe, but it certainly wasn't comfortable. If this was the future, and if Dean--Real-Dean, as far as he was concerned--ever got back to the past, he was seriously going to look into stockpiling Posturpedics. He stretched his sore muscles and sat up, wincing.

"He should have given you better accommodations."

The sudden startle didn't help the crick in his neck any. He stared at Cas in annoyed disbelief. "Really? You're watching me sleep?"

Cas shrugged. "You already woke up. The real you."

"Hey! I'm the real me, okay? You and me...you guys...you're the..."

"Don't hurt yourself." Cas gave him a weak smile. "you seemed freaked out yesterday."

"Well, try meeting your future-self some time. It's not exactly soothing." Especially when your future-self turned out to be such a dick.

"I meant about me." Cas sat in one of the rusty folding chairs and braced his elbows on his knees.

Dean couldn't meet his eyes. "You're not you. Not the way I'm used to you being."

"Ah. I'm not stilted and literal. Not baffled by human actions and the emotions that drive them."

 _But he can still read you like a large-print book,_ Dean thought. He didn't know if he was bitter or comforted.

Cas rose and took a step toward him, all wide-eyed sincerity and compassion. The way he used to look. And that almost made it worse. "I've had to grow. Change. Look around, Dean. This isn't the world as it was in your time. It's transformed us all."

"Clearly." Dean swallowed, his throat suddenly thick. "It's changed you into the kind of guy who has a freaking harem and a daily orgy--"

"Twice a day," Cas interrupted. "Remind you of anyone?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"  _You know exactly what he means._

"You know exactly what I mean." Cas's unblinking stare never wavered. "When I became what I am now, I needed a...a template. I had to model my behavior and my values on something. On someone. I chose you."

"Me?" Dean had to admit, that two-orgies-per-day thing did sound like his M.O., at least in that year pre-Hell. "Well, I guess since it's the end of the world, that makes sense. I can't say I wouldn't be doing the same thing, in your position."

Cas tilted his head, but asked nothing verbally. He didn't have to. His silences always prompted Dean to speak.

"Pick the guy who knows how to have a good time, right?" he went on, his words sounding like pointless babble to his own ears. "Make the most of what you've got left?"

"That's not why I chose you." Cas's brow crumpled into a frown. "Do you think it was the debauchery, the sin that made me want to emulate you?"

"Well, it wasn't my I.Q. or my cholesterol level," Dean said with a short, forced laugh.

Cas didn't laugh with him. "I chose you because of the love I bear for you."

The words punched Dean in the chest, would have pushed him back if they'd been a tangible force. "You love me?"

Cas nodded, just once.

Loved him? "Like a brother, right? The benevolent brotherhood of man, that kind of thing?"

Cas shook his head slowly.

"Like an idol? A hero?" Dean flinched as the word left him. Could he sound more egotistical?

"You are heroic to me, yes," Cas agreed, but before Dean could breathe a sigh of relief, Cas added, "But I'm talking about Eros. Romantic love."

"I know what Eros is," Dean snapped.  _Stay focused. That's not the point._ "You can't love me. You don't have..."

He gestured toward Cas's groin, then immediately regretted it.

"Genitalia has very little to do with love. But no, I'm not...lacking in that area." Cas's gaze dropped. "Neither are you, despite how self-conscious you are about that."

"I know that! You think I don't know that?" Dean stopped cold, a feeling of sudden, uneasy comprehension dawning. "Wait. How do you know that?"

"You're a different person in the future. The nature of our relationship changed."

If gravity quit working, Dean wouldn't have noticed. He felt pretty light-headed and untethered already. "So, in the future...you and me? We..."

"Become lovers, yes," Cas said matter-of-factly. "You're very happy when it happens."

Dean shook his head. There was no way. No way at all. He didn't think of Cas like that. Well, except for a couple of really weird dreams, and nobody would be able to hold those against him. He couldn't control what his brain did while he was asleep. "Look, I'm not gay."

"Of course you aren't. Sexuality is fluid," Cas began, and it sounded like the beginning of an academic lecture that Dean definitely didn't want to sit through.

"No, no. I don't think about that kind of stuff." He'd had a lot of practice shutting those thoughts down before they got complicated. Didn't everyone?

"It's not something you think about," Cas said, his voice low. "It's something you feel."

And then he closed the space between them, his hand coming up to cup the back of Dean's skull.

It all happened so fast. One moment, Dean was staring into Cas's intense blue eyes, something surprisingly unnerving, but not as much as what happened next. Cas's lips covered Dean's with surprising gentleness, and for just a moment, Dean thought about kissing Cas back.

No, not thought. Wanted.

No, not wanted. Ached.

He pushed Cas back. Not hard, just enough to create some breathing room. Just enough so Dean wouldn't feel the demand for more pressure, more contact, more hot, slick--

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Cas began quietly.

"I'm not ashamed." Confused, surprised, disturbingly turned on, but not ashamed. God, he could still taste Cas's mouth. "You're in a relationship."

"With you," Cas reminded him.

"With a much different me, obviously," Dean shot back. "One who said yes to you kissing me. Because I never told you that you could do that."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I just thought--"

"Yeah, well, you thought wrong." Dean's shoulders tensed; he didn't suppose there was a massage parlor nearby. A good one, where they  _really_ got the tension out. "And what if I just walked in here and saw us sucking face? I wouldn't exactly be inclined to help me if I caught myself stealing my own boyfriend."

Wait, did he get all of that right? What the hell was he talking about?

"It's not cheating if it's the same person," Cas said with a shrug. "Besides, Dean and I--you and I--have an arrangement."

"Wrong. You and I don't have anything."

Damnit. He needed fresh air. He needed to get away from the wounded look on Cas's face. He needed to talk to someone outside of this completely insane situation, someone who could help him sort it all out.

 _Oh no. Oh, goddamn it._ If anyone else knew what was going on, it would be Chuck. Chuck had to know. Hell, he'd probably already written a schlocky romance novel about it on some rusty old typewriter or birch bark or whatever they had in this crap hole.

Dean shouldered Cas out of the way, ignoring his body's awareness of even that brief contact.

"Dean, wait." Cas began helplessly.

Dean stopped with his hand on the door. "You didn't model yourself on me. You might think you did, but who you are? That's not me. Because when you're mine--" The words cut him off. He didn't say that. He couldn't have possibly said that. " _If_ you were mine, there wouldn't be any damn arrangement."

He pushed through the door and into the misty, wet morning.


End file.
